Chaos on Mogadishu's Factory Road

A cell phone video of the aftermath of a recent battle between Jihadists and Ethiopian troops in Mogadishu has been posted to Qaadisiya.com, a Web site allied with Shabaab (Somalia Mujahideen Youth Movement).

The five minute video shows Shabaab militants on November 8 parading on Factory Road, a main highway artery in Mogadishu, carrying machine guns and rocket launchers and waving the flag of al-Qaeda. The video cuts to cell phone footage of the bodies of at least two Ethiopian soldiers being kicked and dragged through the street. It then shows a rally that was held in the street by Shabaab.

Shabaab is led by Aden Hashi Ayrow, who trained at al Qaeda camps in the late 1990s and was reportedly chosen by al-Qaeda senior leaders in February 2007 to serve as the network's commander in Somalia. The group has waged an insurgency campaign against Ugandan peacekeepers and Ethiopian forces deployed to back the country's transitional government.